The market conditions and the regulatory framework for the shipping industry and shipyards are changing profoundly. In response, shipyards need to build up the capacity to assess the environmental footprint of their yard-activities and the ship to inform their stakeholders in a transparent, understandable, comprehensive, and trustworthy way. While the environmental footprint of the operational phase of a ship can be covered sufficiently by existing standards, the non-operational footprint of the shipyard processes and the integrated materials and components remain a black box.
It is the ambition of this project to drastically change the as-is situation and to make the impact measurable and thereby drive progress toward circular, zero impact shipping over the full circle of life of a ship. Therefore, CirclesOfLife will develop, test, and validate a general methodology and framework applicable to all European shipyards enabling to close the gaps in assessing the environmental performance of the shipyards and the ships they design, build, maintain, retrofit or recycle. CirclesOfLife will go beyond state of the art by defining a scientifically sound SEPI-methodology and Cradle2Cradle Ship Passport and will test and validate
its applicability in day-to-day business of shipyards and suppliers in several use-cases, ranging from new building- to repair-and maintenance- to recycling yards.
Moreover, CirclesOfLife follows a clear pathway towards market introduction and societal impact supported by Surfrider and ShipBreaking Platform as independent and trustworthy NGO’s. Based on the described measures, CirclesOfLife pursues to offer a widely accepted standard enabling shipyards, maritime equipment manufacturers, shipping companies, finance institutions and other stakeholders to compare the environmental footprint of ships and shipyards.

Role and contribution of CMT gGmbH

As a research institution, CMT contributes its expertise in shipbuilding processes and Life Cycle Performance Analyses (LCPA) and leads the case studies carried out together with the participating shipyards in which the SEPI concept is tested and demonstrated. Typical and particularly high-emission processes are analysed and the savings potential of possible technical and organisational improvement measures is determined.

As a subsidiary of the German Shipbuilding and Ocean Industries Association (VSM e. V.), CMT is in intensive dialogue with stakeholders in the maritime industry beyond the CirclesOfLife consortium. CMT will organise support for the project through the VSM ESG and Compliance Committee. In the maritime lightweight construction network MariLight, coordinated by CMT, the special aspects of new materials such as fibre composites will be considered. This dialogue is expected to provide helpful information for the upcoming review of IMO regulations on this type of material. CMT will engage in a cross-industry exchange on the design of digital product passports in the Digitalisation Working Group of the Strategy Advisory Board of the German government’s Lightweight Construction Initiative.

Consortium